Kijŏng-dong is one of two villages permitted to remain in the four-kilometre-wide (2.5 mi) DMZ set up under the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War;[7][9] the other is the South Korean village of Daeseong-dong,[9] 2.22 kilometres (1.38 mi) away.

Contents

History

The iconic North Korean flagpole at their border village of Kijong-dong (the world's fourth-tallest, standing at 160 m (525 ft) in height) from where a North Korean flag weighing 270 kg (595 lb) flies, located near the Joint Security Area (JSA) of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the former village of Panmunjom.

View of Kijŏng-dong

According to the North Korean government, the village has a collective farm that is run and maintained by 200 local families living there, which is serviced by a child-care center, a kindergarten and a primary school and a secondary school, together with a hospital.[10] However, according to South Korea, the town is an uninhabited village which was established during the 1950s in a seeming attempt of using propaganda skills and efforts to encourage pro-North Korean defection from people in South Korea as well as to house and provide for the North Korean Korean People's Army (KPA) troops manning the wide and extensive network of artillery-gun positions, defensive fortifications and underground command-and-control centres and marshalling-bunkers that surround the border zone.[3][4][11][12]

The village features a number of brightly-painted multi-storey buildings and low-rise apartments (many constructed from poured-concrete), with almost all structures there apparently wired for and provided with electricity. The small town was oriented and positioned such that the bright-blue roofs and white side-walls of the various residential buildings built next to the massive pole flying the North Korean flag would be particularly-distinguishing features when viewed from the southern side across the border (the DMZ) between the two Koreas. Scrutiny with modern telescopic lenses and clearer and sharper images produced, however, has led to the conclusion amongst many that the village's buildings are simply empty shells of concrete and steel which lack not only window-glass but even interior rooms and floors as well,[11][13] with lights in the buildings and structures turned on and off at preset (fixed) times and empty sidewalks in the small town being swept by caretakers (possibly North Korean soldiers in disguise as local civilians) as part of efforts by the North Korean authorities to preserve the illusion of activity and life in the village.[14]

The village is surrounded by extensive and vast cultivated farm-fields which are clearly visible, not only to visitors to the North Korean side of the DMZ, but to visitors to the South Korean side as well.

Propaganda loudspeakers

Massive loudspeakers mounted on several of the buildings deliver DPRK propaganda broadcasts directed towards the South.[11] Originally, they extolled the North's virtues in great detail and urged disgruntled soldiers and farmers to walk across the border to be received as brothers.[17] Few if any took up the offer,[18] and they switched to anti-Western speeches, agitprop operas, and patriotic marching music for up to 20 hours a day.[17] From 2004 to 2016, North and South agreed to end their loudspeaker broadcasts at each other.[19] The broadcasts resumed in 2016 due to escalating tensions as a result of the January 2016 nuclear test,[20] though the South unilaterally decided to halt its broadcasts at midnight on 22 April 2018 as a gesture of goodwill days before the 2018 inter-Korean summit was held on 27 April.[21]